If the incinerator goes ahead the only birds we'll have round here will be crows picking at torn black bags.

Come to Hatfield now, there are plenty of black bags already left lying around here, crows, magpies, starlings, blackbirds all having a feast. In addition to the domestic cats and dogs who love them too, I have seen rats. I can assure you all wildlife abounds in the rubbish! And I have a plethora of emails to our Council and Letting Agents complaining, there's no shortage of bin bags incinerator or none.

I have just been watching a great tit with an unusual long, curved beak struggling to feed on our feeders. It's beak looks like the beak of a treecreeper. I can't take a photograph of it because my camera is not that good, but I have adapted this picture from one of my bird books to try to illustrate what it looks like. I searched the web and found this article about the deformity.

In domesticated birds this kind of deformity is usually caused by a malapposition of the jaw which doesn't allow the normal wearing down of the 'horny' part of the beak, hence some parrots and budgies needing frequent beak clipping. It's certainly very common in the aforementioned species. Some of the examples in the article were extreme (the starling notably) and I'm surprised they've survived.

British Trust for Ornithology are carrying out a survey on this problem as many Garden Birdwatch survey members have reported deformed beaks on garden birds. More info can be found on www.bto.org and search on Big Garden Beak Watch.

Update for anyone worried about our great tit with the long, deformed beak. It seems to be doing fine. It was on the nuts today and was using the long curved beak with impressive dexterity. It looks healthy, a bit fat in fact and extremely active.

David

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For those concerned about the tit with the deformed beak, some good news. It looks as though the bottom part has dropped off. It appears as though only the top part of the beak is too long now. Perhaps that will break off at some point. Some pictures from this morning.

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The easiest way is to click on the 'Attachments and other options' link immediately below the area where you write messages. You then browse to the file on your computer and upload. That way is size-limited but you can still upload decent images.

The other way is if the pictures are already online and you know the web address. You then copy the web address into your message, highlight it and click the picture icon to put the display code around the link.

The third way is to upload the images to this site's gallery and promote it in the thread. You can also carry out step two mentioned above once you know the web address of each image.

I look forward to seeing your pictures.[/list]

« Last Edit: July 12, 2011, 06:57:12 am by David Brewer »

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The Brookmans Park Newsletter has been supporting the village and our local community since 1998 by providing free, interactive tools for all to use.